Because it would still be "Star Trek". It would still be Kirk, Spock and the Enterprise out exploring really weird shit and fighting bad guys.

You toss the prior continuity because why tie the hands of a new creative staff with bullshit? You can eliminate people screaming about how the color of Kirk's medal doesn't match the color of the medal we see in This Side of Paradise.

I love Star Trek. But I think any new series is best served by shedding the last forty years of continuity and starting over with the basic premise and rebuilding the universe from there.

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If they're going to toss the last 40 years and start over, they should just develop some other SF series that includes spaceships, heroic captains, aliens, etc. It seems to me as though they only want to call it "Star Trek" because it's a recognized brand name.

And personally I don't actually care about Kirk's medals. I worked in the theatre (as in live theatre), and sometimes we didn't have access to all the props (they might have been damaged or lost). We had to do a lot of improvising. In all honesty, I never noticed those ST details.

I love Star Trek. But I think any new series is best served by shedding the last forty years of continuity and starting over with the basic premise and rebuilding the universe from there.

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Definitely. At some point people need to stop equating Berman-Trek with Star Trek. Berman-Trek is based on Star Trek, created by and large by other people, and no more a valid version than any other derivative. I think, though, that many people who call themselves Star Trek fans are really Berman-Trek fans, and they're going to have the hardest time with new derivatives of Star Trek.

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You are confusing me with one of those "Berman-Trek fans." I'm primarily a TOS fan who happens to like specific episodes of TNG, specific characters in DS9, and most of Voyager.

But this does not preclude accepting the events of TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT as canon. Just that we want a new storytelling style.

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I think that you have to simply let all that go. I want the next show-runner to have total freedom to place the show in the 28th century with the Eugenics Wars happening in the 23rd and the first warp flight happening in the 25th, if he/she so desires.

Carrying over continuity from the old series would just shackle the new creative team to something that has nothing more to offer creatively.

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In that case, why bother to call it Star Trek?

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Because Star Trek is more than just forty years of continuity. It's a concept--and sometimes a set of characters--that aren't necessarily tied to the particulars of what happened in a previous cycle of TV shows or movies.

You can make a STAR TREK movie or TV series, about the crew of the Starship Enterprise exploring strange new worlds and all that, without having to, say, stick to exactly what "Balance of Terror" said about the Romulan Wars. That was the old version. Doesn't mean you can make a new one.

Just like you can make a Sherlock Holmes movie without being wedded to the continuity of the old Basil Rathbone movies or whatever. Or you can make, say, a Mission: Impossible movie that doesn't necessarily treat every old TV episode as "canon."

Star Trek does not have to incorporate the "prime timeline" to be recognizable as Star Trek. Trek is an idea, not a trivia contest.

Forbid the concept that Kirk and Spock aren't the only characters in the Star Trek universe and the setting isn't fixed on the starship Enterprise only.

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This absolutely kills me!

There are seventy-nine episodes of Star Trek, there are over six-hundred episodes of the spin-offs. I'd say it's about time to explore the core of Star Trek a little bit more before rushing off to create yet another generic ship and crew.

If they're going to toss the last 40 years and start over, they should just develop some other SF series that includes spaceships, heroic captains, aliens, etc. It seems to me as though they only want to call it "Star Trek" because it's a recognized brand name.

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Okay, I have to ask: If Batman Begins was going to ignore all the previous Batman movies and TV series and start over again, should they have just invented another dark avenger of the night?

Of course not. Because the concept and the character do NOT equal the continuity. Batman Begins is no less a Batman movie for starting over from scratch than any new Star Trek project that keeps the basic idea but chucks the continuity of the previous versions.

(Plus, let's be honest: If they'd done what you suggest, but kept the transporters and starships and a prime directive and such, everyone would rightly accuse the "new" series of ripping off Star Trek!)

I actually think there's something to what BillJ says about starting from scratch and inventing with the same sense of freedom the original show's creators did. But I do think that at a certain point, one may well be better off to just call it a new property -- especially if that would actually allow one to get away from transporters and prime directives and ships that only go to "M-class" planets. If enough of the specific concept were kept, one could still call it Trek, but a lot of the concept was based on budget constraints of Sixties television.

If they're going to toss the last 40 years and start over, they should just develop some other SF series that includes spaceships, heroic captains, aliens, etc. It seems to me as though they only want to call it "Star Trek" because it's a recognized brand name.

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Okay, I have to ask: If Batman Begins was going to ignore all the previous Batman movies and TV series and start over again, should they have just invented another dark avenger of the night?

Of course not. Because the concept and the character do NOT equal the continuity. Batman Begins is no less a Batman movie for starting over from scratch than any new Star Trek project that keeps the basic idea but chucks the continuity of the previous versions.

(Plus, let's be honest: If they'd done what you suggest, but kept the transporters and starships and a prime directive and such, everyone would rightly accuse the "new" series of ripping off Star Trek!)

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Good point. I remember trying to tell people about Babylon Five when it was on, and was astounded at the number of people who literally could not wrap their head around this not being Star Trek.

True story: Many years ago, an original sf novel fell into the hands of a copyeditor who didn't seem to realize that that Star Trek and science fiction were not one and the same, so he want through and "corrected" the manuscript to make it consistent with what he knew about Star Trek, changing the book's own terminology to "phasers," "warp drive," "Starfleet," etc.

Needless to say, all of this had to be undone before the book could be published!

It occurs to me there are probably people who think Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones are the same thing.

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Absolutely. If you're not into the genre, it all looks the same to you. Just like some people think that all westerns are just the same old "cowboys and Indians" cliches. Or can't tell the difference between a good slasher movie and a piece of junk.

Or, worse yet, think that all vampire stories are just rip-offs of Twilight . . .

Leonard Nimoy:[referring to the monorail] I'd say this vessel could do at least Warp Five.
[crowd laughs] Mayor Quimby: And let me say, "May the Force be with you." Leonard Nimoy: [annoyed] Do you even know who I am?Mayor Quimby: I think I do. Weren't you one of the Little Rascals?